1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a running gear frame for a running gear of a rail vehicle with a frame body, which is configured to be supported on at least one wheel unit of the running gear. The invention furthermore relates to a running gear with a running gear frame according to the invention and to a respective method for producing a running gear frame.
2. Description of the Related Art
The production of structural components for rail vehicles, e.g. of frames or bogie bolsters for running gears, in particular of running gears, is performed today mostly by welding sheet material, as it is known, for example, from EP 0 345 708 A1 and EP 0 564 423 A1 This production method, however, has the disadvantage that it requires a relatively large percentage of manual labor, which makes the production of running gear frames comparatively expensive.
The percentage of cost intensive manual labor can be reduced in principle, when cast components are used instead of welded construction. Thus, it is known e.g. from GB 1 209 389 A or from U.S. Pat. No. 6,622,776 B2 to use cast steel components for a vehicle frame of a rail vehicle. While a one piece cast bogie frame is produced according to GB 1 209 389 A, according to U.S. Pat. No. 6,622,776 B2 the longitudinal beams and transverse beams of a bogie are made of one or plural standard cast steel components and are subsequently joined to form a bogie frame.
Cast steel has the advantage that it is weldable, so that this conventional joining method can also be used in this production variant. The cast steel, however, has the disadvantage that it has a rather limited flow capability. In conjunction with automated production of relatively large components with complex geometries, like e.g. running gear frames for rail vehicles, this leads to reduced process reliability, which is not acceptable in view of the high safety requirements which are placed upon a running gear of a rail vehicle. Therefore, also when producing such running gear frames from cast steel material, relatively many process steps still have to be performed manually and therefore no economically satisfactory degree of automation can be achieved with this process either, provided that the automation works at all.
Furthermore, it is known, for example from DE 43 09 004 A1, to produce relatively small load-bearing parts of the running gear suspension of multi-axle utility vehicles from grey cast iron.
Thus, it is the object of the present invention to provide a running gear frame as described above, which does not show the disadvantages described above, or at least shows them to a lesser extent, and which in particular facilitates simple production and thus an increased degree of automation of the production.